In the last few years swimming pool gutter construction has undergone substantial changes. From a time prior to 1960 when the plumbing for swimming pools was usually buried in the soil surrounding the swimming pool, gutters have now been provided extending around the perimeter of the pool which include one trough for collecting surge water that flows over the top of the gutter rim thereinto and delivers it to a filter, and a second passageway or pipe through which filtered water is delivered and returned to the pool. Examples of such prior construction are illustrated in the Ogden U.S. Pat. No. 2,932,397, particularly FIG. 5, which shows the basic idea of collecting and returning water utilizing the gutter rather than underground piping; the Scarano U.S. Pat. No. 3,319,264 which shows a plastic, dual channel gutter construction; the Patterson et al U.S. Pat. No. 3,923,230 which shows a welding procedure for fabricating and assembling sheet metal into a dual channel gutter construction. Other patents show similar approaches.
In most of the approaches in the above listed patents, with the exception of the Scarano patent, the gutter construction is formed from sheet metal or precast concrete sections, all of which are relatively expensive and difficult to install. The gutter construction shown in the Scarano patent is relatively simple to install, however, utilizes an expensive extruded plastic section in which the water returning to the pool is transmitted back through a passageway above the trough which carries the water being collected. Also there is a relatively small V-shaped groove which collects the water surging over the sides of the gutter assembly with the result that much of the surge water returns to the pool rather than into the lower chamber 21.
Therefore, while various gutter constructions are available all suffer from one disadvantage; that is that they are relatively more expensive than need be because of expensive die costs in the case of plastic gutter construction and because of the substantial labor and skilled labor involved in the installation of the metal guttering.